INS Romach (1981)

INS Romach is an Israeli missile boat of the Shayetet 3 Flotilla, one of ten Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boats. She was launched in 1981 by Israel Shipyards at the Port of Haifa. She has been a part of Israeli Navy since October 1981.

Construction
Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boats are a bigger version of the Sa'ar 4-class missile boat. New ships were longer, so they take an augmented armament.

INS Romach was built at the Israel Shipyards in Port of Haifa. She was launched on 30 October 1981.

Description
The length of INS Romach is 61.7 m, the breadth is 7.6 m and the draught is 2.5 m. Romach, as other Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boats, has a flush deck, short superstructure located in front of the midship and freeboard. The main propulsion machinery are four compression-ignition MTU 16V538 TB93 engines, the total power of them is 16000 hp. The flank speed of this ship is 31 kn; the range is 3000 nmi at a speed of about 17 kn and 1500 nmi at 30 kn. The full load displacement is 488 tonnes.

The primary armament is two quadruple launchers of American Harpoon anti-ship missiles, allocated directly behind the superstructure. The missile is able to reach 130 km, the speed is 0.9 Mach and the weight of the warhead is 227 kg. There are also six single launchers of Israeli Gabriel Mark II missiles allocated behind them with a 75 kg warhead and a range of about 36 km. In service, the Israeli Navy set two 8-fold anti-aircraft Barak 1 launchers with the range of a projectile of 10 km, making the armament identical to one in INS Hetz (1991).

The secondary armament consists of single, dual-purpose gun OTO Melara 76 mm, allocated abaft in a gun turret. The weight of the projectile is 6 kg, the range is 16 km and the rate of fire is 85 rounds per minute (RPM). The angle of elevation is 85°. There are also two single Oerlikon 20 mm cannon with a range of 2 km and rate of fire of 900 RPM and one double (or quadruple) station for M2 Browning machine guns. The bow is armed with close-in weapon system, Phalanx CIWS. The rate of fire is 3,000 RPM, and the range is 1500 m.